Oh My Stars
by PhoebeLovesSouffle
Summary: It's just an ordinary Wednesday for Clara. The Doctor has turned up in his little blue box and once again he's promising her the Universe. But this time, it's different, and she's about to discover how cruel the Universe can be. She's going to need the Doctor to hold her hand... [ T because I'm paranoid, might have a few Whouffle moments :) ]
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Hello! This is my new fic, multichaptered this time :D Sorry for the lack of italics and boldness etc, this app doesn't let me do that. Thanks for reading and hope you enjoy! :)

The Doctor strides happily out of the TARDIS, a contented smile hanging on his face. On Clara's request to be collected every Wednesday, he flicked a few switches immediately after she stepped out of the TARDIS last week and back to her normal life, and ended up here. For Clara, a week has passed but to the Doctor (who is not the most patient of people) it feels like merely a few minutes.

All of the houses look pretty identical, but he remembers the house number and the colour of the curtains in the top bedroom, which he also remembers to be Clara's bedroom (from that time when he fed her Jammy dodgers), and was so involved with trying to work out why she's so impossible. Nowadays, he's given up, and just appreciates her as a friend.

He considers sonicing the door, just for an extra dramatic entrance, but Mr Maitland still has no idea that he's an alien and there are people milling about the area. Something like that wouldn't go unnoticed in a suburban area, and when the press came flocking he'd just have to run away, perhaps never to return. So he decides to just ring the doorbell.

Angie runs to answer it, and grins mischievously when she sees who it is. "Knew it would be you!" she exclaims.  
"I guessed you would," the Doctor muses. "You probably wouldn't have got off the sofa otherwise." He ruffles her hair fondly and she doesn't look too impressed, so he awkwardly tries to rearrange it strand by strand to its former glory (and to no avail). "You look rather funny like that," he observes, but her face is like thunder so he rolls his eyes and decides not to pursue it.

"Anyway," he says, rubbing his hands together. "I'm after Clara, you know the drill, every Wednesday, all of space and time... Pretty cool, might I say." He smiles to himself, impressed with his own ability to travel the universe. Angie smiles pitifully at him."Clara? Not in. She's out.. er, clubbing, with her new boyfriend. Yeah... No universe today." The Doctor frowns, obviously unaware that it's not the norm to go out clubbing during the day. "Boyfriend... Clubbing?!" He makes a 'tut tut' sound under his breath, which sounds rather defeated. "Scandalous," he mutters.

Angie supresses a giggle and puts a hand to her mouth, slowly closing the door on the Doctor. He waits there for a minute, in slight disbelief that Clara could forget about, or have other priorities besides their adventures. It's starting to rain but still he stands there. He pulls a small umbrella from his purple tweed jacket in the way he would with a sonic screwdriver, and aims it away from himself. At the flick of a button it expands and shelters him from the rain.

Somebody in the kitchen switches a light on; he can see its glow through the frosted glass. But something else the frosted glass reveals is the silhouette of Angie, waiting in the hall. The Doctor squints and leans forward, just to make sure it's her, and it is. Same frizzy hair, slightly wonky on her head from the incident earlier. He taps the glass impatiently, and she stands up, opening the door slowly.

"Still here?" she asks. He nods."Angie!" someone bellows from the top of the stairs, and the Doctor smiles up at her. It's Clara, and he's happy to see her, even if he is a little confused, to say the least."Doctor!" Clara says brightly. "Thought it was you... You're a bit later than normal time, not that I'm complaining..." She smiles weakly, and looks over to Angie who's backing away slowly.

"Aren't you supposed to be clubbing... With your... Boyfriend?" The Doctor asks. "Not that I blame you. I've known a few party animals in my time, they're great fun, never knew you were one. Once got lost on the way to a Nightclub on the planet of the Disco Balls, as it's affectionately named. Picked up about five of them on the way and sold them to the owner when we got there, don't think he realised he lived on a planet full of them."  
"Sounds... Wild," Clara says, slightly unsure. "Really, wild. But as for my inner party animal - it doesn't exist, and, I don't have a boyfriend?"

There's a moment of silence whilst the Doctor contemplates this, and his expression turns to annoyance once he realises that all of this was Angie's doing. He feels a little foolish, but a little bit of explanation to Clara sorts everything out. Sort of."Angie told me you were out clubbing. What a little dalek!" he says, smacking himself on the forehead and exclaiming "ow" when the pain actually hits. Angie's not here to confirm or deny this (the way she just slipped away upstairs should have been clue enough that the Doctor didn't just make all of this up).

"I'm not mad!" he protests."You are a bit," Clara smiles, and he nods his head slowly, as if to say 'fair enough'. He takes her hand, but releases it quickly when he remembers that that's not really the norm in 21st century Britain. "Sorry," he says. "Get a bit confused sometimes. What's normal where. It's like jetlag, but time lag, if you like... Wait, its nothing like jetlag, forget that."

"I like the hand holding part." She slides her hand around his. "And I like the hugging part, too." She gives him a quick hug, and in case Angie's watching out of the window, they walk off quickly and into the TARDIS, which is parked out of view around the corner. 


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Thank you for the lovely reviews, follows and favourites, and I hope you enjoy this chapter :D

The Doctor flings open the TARDIS doors and waits behind Clara, gesturing for her to enter first. Noticing his tendency for being formal she does a little curtsy, surpresses a giggle and leans back on the control room railings whilst the Doctor presses an array of strange looking buttons and levers.

"So, where to?" she says, bounding down the stairs before him. He shrugs his shoulders, and she's not sure how he can't not get excited about seeing the universe any more, but she guesses that once you've made the whole universe your back yard there's not much that can excite you anymore.

But the prospect of showing someone else his universe excites him the most. "I was in the year one billion the other day, didn't go down too well..." he says. "How was I supposed to know that you weren't to try on the intergalactic crown jewels? Anyway, I'd appreciate it if we didn't go back there, I'm sort of a wanted man, and they'll put me in the Tower of New London if they find me..."

"The Tower of New London?" Clara interrupts.

"Yeah, they rebuilt it along with the city itself. Don't blame them, the old one was a bit shabby."

"Right..." she says slowly. If this is what travelling's always like then it seems a bit confusing to Clara, but the confusing element doesn't stop it from being damn awesome.

"What about somewhere in the past, this week?" she suggests. "To see the people we doodled moustaches on in textbooks..."

The Doctor grins, and Clara guesses he can probably relate that to his own experience at school, when he was about... Eighty. "Never drew moustaches," he reminisces. "Tentacles were where it was at on Gallifrey."

Clara starts laughing at this, and of course the Doctor doesn't really understand why his remark was obviously so funny. But Clara isn't laughing at that, oh no. Well, she is partly, but it's rather a fond laugh of the impossibility, madness and eccentricity of the man. She loves travelling with the Doctor, more than anything she's ever done; she'd do it all the time if she could.

"Queen Victoria was always the ultimate moustache face in school," she grins. "What about the Victorian times?"

"If only she could have seen you having fun..." he says sadly. "From what I've seen of her she's a bit miserable. Perhaps we could cheer her up. I tried once and she didn't really appreciate my humour, maybe she'll appreciate yours."

"Doctor," Clara whispers, leaning across into his ear. "I'm not very good at cheering people up... Angie tells me so. So I really don't think I'd be good with /the/ Queen Victoria. Plus, I haven't really read up on Victorian humour..."

"Neither did I," the Doctor confesses. "She was not amused, might I say." Clara giggles and slaps him playfully across the cheek, to which he mocks it really hurting and rubs his cheek as if it is sore.

"So," Clara says, really not wanting to waste any more time. "Victorian era sometime, specifically avoiding Queen Vic herself?" The Doctor grins and does a little thumbs up to Clara.

"Oh yes! Dress, dress, dress," he says, pacing up and down the control room. "I'm really not good with what to wear, she is -" He pats the control panel of the TARDIS. "Down the corridor, second left, there's a wardrobe. Just pick something from there." He waves his hand dismissively. "Feel free to have a girly heart to heart or something while you're down there, just don't be too long."

"A girly heart to heart with a little wooden box...?" Clara says slowly. The Doctor nods as if it's the most normal thing in the world, but slaps himself in the forehead when he realises what he said.

"Sorry," he says. "She can't talk. Anyway." He runs a hand through the floppy part of his hair. "If you're lucky you might get something nice, I'm sure she appreciates being called little. She's been aiming to be petite for a long time."

Clara's about to say that the TARDIS is massive on the inside, but quite frankly she doesn't want to jeopardise her chances of getting something half decent to wear on this week's adventure. "Right," she says, wandering off down the corridor.

She's quite thankful that she remembered the Doctor's orders, because in truth she really did not expect herself to. Once she's turned left, she comes to a rather ordinary looking wardrobe with just one dress hanging on one of its handles. In truth it's a bit frilly for Clara's liking, but she decides to make do and avoid opening the cupboard for fear of unleashing something nasty that's been growing there, or having to witness the Doctor's random dress sense in action.

By the time she's finished there's a pile of her modern day clothes on the floor, and her pair of flat pumps that she decides to slip on instead of the ones she's been given that fit with the era. The dress is long enough to cover them, and they're black so they match its colour, and camouflage pretty well.

Clara feels a little foolish as she waddles back into the TARDIS control room. She's not quite got the hang of even walking properly in the dress; it sways at an odd angle as she moves and sets her completely off balance. But for travelling through time and space with the Doctor, she guesses some sacrificies must be made.

"I know, I look ridiculous..." she sighs. The Doctor stares at her for a moment, and when he fails to respond to her comment she gets a bit... Concerned. "Doctor?..."

"What? Yes? Oh, sorry..." he blushes a bit.

"Down, boy," she smiles.

He blushes scarlet this time and hastily changes the subject. He grabs a strange looking hat and pulls on a different jacket, leaving his purple tweed hanging on the railings.

"Geronimo!" he says excitedly. Clara frowns at him but smiles anyway, because she really has not heard anyone say that for a long time.

"Oh, yes... Geronimo. Sort of a catchphrase, mainly just a thing I like saying. You know. Catchphrases are cool."

"Not as cool as Bowties," Clara winks at him, and he looks a mixture of surprised and annoyed.

"Ah, I see what you did there!" he grins, pointing at her. But his expression morphs into one of mock annoyance, as he mutters "Oi... Get your own catchphrase..."

He spins into action and pulls a few levers. Clara insists he doesn't know what he's doing (because it certainly doesn't look like it) but she leaves him to it, because in a matter of minutes he's opening the TARDIS doors on a snowy Victorian Winter scene.

The Doctor grins wildly, a sort of madness lighting up his eyes. Clara steps tentatively onto the snow and shivers, and the Doctor grips her hand, leading her though the busy street. 


End file.
